A DISCOURSE 



CONCERNINI} THE 



INFLUENCE OF AMERICA ON THE MIND; 

BEING THE 

ANNUAL ORATION 

DELIVERED BEFORE 

THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY, 

AT THE UNIVERSITY IN PHILADELPHIA, 
ON THE 18th OCTOBER, 1823, 
BY THEIR APPOINTMENT, AND PUBLISHED BY THEIR ORDER. 



0. ir.A w 



BY Cr'Jr INGERSOLL, 

MEMBEB OF THE AMERICAS PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIKT?. 



PHILADELPHIA : 

PUBLISHED BY ABRAHAM SMALL. 

1823. 




\ 



\ 



AT a Special Meeting of the American Phi- 
losophical Society, held this day, it was 

Resolved, that the thanks of the Society he com- 
municated to Mr. INGERSOLL, for the oration 
pronounced by him^ this day, by their appointment^ 
and that he be requested to furnish them a copy for 
publication. 

Extract from the Minutes, 

R. M. PATTERSON, Secretary, 
Hall of the Amer. Phil. Soc, 
Oct, I8th, 1823. 



A DISCOURSE, &c. 



Appointed to deliver the annual discourse of 
the American Philosophical Society y I propose to 
sketch the philosophical condition of this country, 
and explain the influence of America on the mind. 
The task is not an easy one, owing to the extreme 
dispersion of the materials. Elsewhere intellectual 
improvements are collected in the accessible reposi- 
tories of a metropolis, absorbing most of the intelli- 
gence of a whole nation, and flourishing with arti- 
ficial culture long applied. In the United States 
we have no such emporium ; the arts and sciences 
are but of recent and spontaneous growth, scatter- 
ed over extensive regions and a sparse population. 
We will begin with the base of the American 
pile, whose aggrandisement, like the pyramids of 
Africa, confounds the speculations of Europe. 
While the summit and sides elsewhere are more 
wrought and finished, America excels in the 
foundation, in which we are at least the se- 
niors, of all other nations. Public funds for the 

B 



tlie education oi" the whole community are endow- 
ments exclusively American, which have been in 
operation here for several ages, while the most im- 
proved governments of Europe are but essaying 
such a groundwork, which indeed some of them 
dread, and others dare not risk. It is nearly 
two hundred years since school funds were esta- 
blished by that aboriginal and immortal hive of 
intelligence, piety, and self-government, the Ply- 
mouth colony. These inestimable appropriations 
are now incorporated with all our fundamental in- 
stitutions. By the Constitution of the United States 
it is the duty of government to promote the pro- 
jj-ress of science and the useful arts. Not one of 

O 

the eleven new States has been admitted into the 
Union without provision in its constitution for 
schools, academies, colleges, and universities. In 
most of the original States large sums in money 
are appropriated to education, and they claim a 
share in the great landed investments which are 
mortgaged to it in the new States. Reckoning all 
those contributions federal and local, it may be 
asserted that nearly as much as the whole national 
expenditure of the United States is set apart by 
laws to enlighten the people. The public patron- 
age of learning in this country, adverting to what 
the value of these donations will be before the 
close of the present century, equals at least the os- 
tentatious bounties conferred on it in Europe. In 
one State alone, m ith but 275,000 inhabitants, 
more than forty thousand pupils are instructed at 



tlie public schools. I believe we may compute 
the number of such pupils throughout the United 
States at more than half a million. In the city of 
Philadelphia, without counting the pnvate or the 
charity schools, there are about five thousand pu- 
pils in tiie Commonwealth's seminaries, taught 
reading, writing, and arithmetic, at an expense to 
the public of little more than three dollars a year 
each one. Nearly the whole minor population of 
the United States are receiving school education. 
Besides the multitudes at school, there are consi- 
derably more than three thousand under graduates 
always matriculated at the various colleges and 
universities, authorised to grant academical de- 
crees ; not less than twelve hundred at the medical 
schools ; several hundred at the theological semi- 
naries ; and at least a thousand students of law. 
Nearly all of these are under the tuition of profes- 
sors, without sinecure support, depending for their 
livelihood on capacity and success in the science 
of instruction. In no part of these extensive realms 
of knowledge is there any monastic prepossession 
against the modern improvements. Not long since 
chemistry, political economy, and the other great 
improvements of the age were excluded from the 
English universities as innovations unfit to be 
classed with rhetoric, logic, and scholastic ethics. 
Oxford and Cambridge, in the fine metaphor of 
Dugald Stewart, are immovably moored to the*same 
station by the strength of their cables, thereby ena- 
bling the historian of the human mind to measure 



8 

the rapidity of the current by which the rest of the 
world are borne along. The schools are equally 
stationary. Notwithstanding their barbarous disci- 
pline, and the barbarous privileges of the colleges, 
they have always produced good Latinists and Hel- 
lenists. But American education is better adapted 
to enlarge and strengthen the mind, and prepare it 
for practical usefulness. In that excellent institu- 
tion, the Military Academy, the dead languages are 
not taught, and that kind of scholarship is postpon- 
ed to sciences certainly more appropriate to a mili- 
taiy education. This is not the occasion to inquire 
whether those standard exercises of the faculties 
and roots of language may ever be supplanted with- 
out injury. But as it is certain that the many great 
men w ho have received education at the English 
seminaries is not a conclusive proof of their excel- 
lence, though often cited for the purpose, so it is 
also true, that eminent individuals have appeared in 
literature and science, without the help of that kind 
of scholarship. The founder of the American Phi- 
losophical Society was not a scholar in this sense ; 
yet his vigorous and fruitful mind, teeming with 
sagacity, and cultivated by observation, germinated 
many of the great discoveries, which, since matur- 
ed by others, have become the monuments of the 
age : And whether science, politics, or polite litera- 
ture, was the subject of which Franklin treated, he 
always wrote in a fine, pure style, with the power 
and the charm of genius. 

Successive improvements in the modern Ian- 



9 

guages, continually perfecting themselves under the 
prevalence of liberal ideas, have brought thenn to a 
degree of moral certainty and common attainment, 
which must render the dead languages less important 
hereafter. Their study will be confined probably 
to a few ; and may, perhaps, in the lapse of time, 
perish under the mass of knowledge destined lo oc- 
cupy entirely the limited powers of the human un- 
derstanding. While, therefore, we are discussing 
whether the learning of the ancient languages ought 
to be maintained, innovating time is settling the 
question in spite of unavailing efforts and regrets 
for the imnortal authors of European literature. 
Thus we may understand why the Latin and Greek 
languages are less cultivated in America than in 
Europe. Unfettered by inveterate prepossessions, 
the mind, on this continent, follows in its march the 
new spirit that is abroad, leading the intelligence of 
all the world to other pursuits. 

Since the career of this country began, education 
on the continent of Europe has severely suffered by 
political fluctuations, and continues to be thwarted 
by political superintendence. Whatever science 
and literature accomplish there must be in spite 
of a perplexing and pernicious education. Wanting 
the stability and tranquillity and security of free 
institutions, their existence is in perpetual fluctuation 
and jeopardy, fhe schools are regulated by one 
dynasty to day, by another on opposite principles 
to-morrow, as the instruments of each in its turn, 
employed as much in unlearning what had been 



10 

laugiit, as in learning what is to be inculcated, con- 
tinually molested and convulsed by state intrusion. 
The arts and sciences which war requires and re- 
quites, may be encouraged and advanced : and for- 
tunately for mankind, their extensive circle embra- 
ces many in which peace also delights or may 
enjoy. The northern universities have best 
preserved both their liberality and their useful- 
ness. But in southern Europe, learning appears 
to be disastrously eclipsed where it has never 
ceased to receive Pagan and Christian sacrifice 
for more than two thousand successive years. — 
Liberty, says Sismondi, had bestowed on Italy 
four centuries of grandeur and glory; during 
which, she did not need conquests to make her 
sreatness known. The Italians were the first to 
study the theory of government, and to set the ex- 
ample of liberal institutions. They restored to the 
world, philosophy, eloquence, poetry, history, ar- 
chitecture, sculpture, painting, and music. No 
science, art, or knowledge could be mentioned, the 
elements of which they did not teach to people 
who have since surpassed them. This universality 
of intelligence had developed their mind, their taste, 
and their manners, and lasted as long as Italian 
liberty. How melancholy is the modern reverse of 
this attractive picture I When even freedom of 
thought can hardly breathe, and freedom of speech 
or writing has no existence, revolution is the only 
remedy for disorder ; sedition infects the schools, 
rebellion the academies, and treason the universi- 



11 



ties. In America, where universal education is the 
hand-maid of universal suffrage, execution has 
never been done on a traitor ; general intelligence 
disarms politics of their chimerical terrors ; our 
only revolution was but a temperate transition, with- 
out mobs, massacres, or more than a single instance 
of signal perfidy ; every husbandman understands 
the philosophy of politics better than many princes 
in Europe. Poetry, music, sculpture, and paint- 
ing, may yet linger in their Italian haunts. But 
philosophy, the sciences, and the useful arts, 
must establish their empire in the modern re- 
public of letters, where the mind is free from 
power or fear, on this side of that great water bar- 
rier which the creator seems to have designed 
for the protection of their asylum. The monarchs 
of the old world may learn from those sovereign 
citizens, the ex-presidents of these United States, the 
worth of an educated nation : who, having made 
large contributions to literature and the sciences, 
live in voluntary retirement from supreme authori- 
ty, at ages beyond the ordinary period of European 
existence, enjoying the noble recreations of books 
and benevolence, without guards for their protec- 
tion, or pomp for their disguise, accessible, ad- 
mired, protected, and( immortalised. The Egyp- 
tians pronounced posthumous judgment on theii' 
kings : we try our presidents while living in cano- 
nised resignation, and award to those deserving it, 
an exquisite foretaste of immortality. 

In adult life we may trace the effects of the causes 



13 

just indicated in education. The English language 
makes English reading American : and a generous, 
especially a parental nationality, instead of dispa- 
raging a supposed deficiency in the creation of lite- 
rature, should remember and rejoice, that the idiom 
and ideas of England are also those of this country, 
and of this continent, destined to be enjoyed and 
improved by millions of educated and thinking 
people, spreading from the bay of Fundy to the 
mouth of the Columbia. Such is the influence of 
general education and self-government, that already 
over a surface of almost two thousand miles square, 
there are scarcely any material provincialisms or 
peculiarities of dialect, much less than in any nation 
in Europe, I believe I might say than in any hundred 
miles square in Europe ; and, what is perhaps even 
more remarkable, the German, Dutch and French 
veins which exist in different sections, are rapidly 
yielding to the English ascendancy, by voluntary 
fusion, without any^coercive or violent applications. 
Adverting to the great results from the mysterious 
diversity of the various languages of mankind, the 
anticipation is delightful in the effects of the Ame- 
rican unity of tongue, combined with universal 
education throughout this vast continent, — the 
home of l.'berty at least, if not the seat of one great 
empire. 

But speaking and writing the language of an an- 
cient*and refined people, whose literature preoccupies 
nearly every department, is, in many respects, an un- 
exampled disadvantage in the comparative estimate. 



13 

America cannot contribute in any comparative pro- 
portion to the great British stock of literature, which 
almost supercedes the necessity of American sub- 
scriptions. Independent of this foreign oppression, 
the American mind has been called more to politi- 
cal, scientific, and mechanical, than to literary exer- 
tion. And our institutions, moreover, partaking of 
the nature of our government, have a levelling ten- 
dency. The average of intellect, and of intellectual 
power in the United States, surpasses that of any 
part of Europe. But the range is not, in general, 
so great, either above or below the horizontal line. 
In the literature of imagination, our standard is con- 
siderably below that of England, France, Germany 
and perhaps Italy. The concession, however, may 
be qualified by a claim to a respectable production 
of poetry ; and the recollection that American 
scenes and incidents have been wrought by Ame- 
rican authors into successful romances, some of 
which have been re-published and translated, and 
are in vogue in Europe ; and that even popular dra- 
matic performances have been composed out of 
these incidents. The stage, however, is indicative 
of many things in America, being engrossed by the 
English drama and English actors. But as a prooL. 
of American fondness, if not taste, for theatrical en- 
tertainment, I may mention here that an English 
comedian has lately received for performances 
before the audiences of four or five towns, whose 
united population falls short of four hundred thou- 
sand people, a much larger income than any of the 
ictors of that countrv receive in which this sort of 

C 

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14 

intellectual recreation is most esteemed. There 
would be no inducement for strolling across the 
Atlantic, if the largest capital in Europe afforded 
similar encouragement, taking emolument as the 
test, and London with 1,200,000 inhabitants as 
the standard. As another remarkable proof of the 
state of the stage in the United States, I may add 
that an eminent American actor appears in the 
same season, (and it is practicable within the same 
mon'.h) before audiences at Boston and New-Or- 
leans, compassing two thou'sand miles from one to 
the other, by internal conveyance. Such is the 
philosophical, as well as natural, approximation of 
place, and the unity of speech throughout that dis- 
tance. 

In the literature of fact, of education, of politics, 
and of perhaps even science, European pre-emi- 
nence is by no means so decided. The American 
schools, the church, the state, the bar, the medical 
profession, are, all but the last, largely, and all of 
them adequately, supplied by their own literature. 
Respectable histories are extant by American au- 
thors of the States of Kentucky, Georgia, North 
Carolina, South Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, Penn- 
sylvania, New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Maine, 
Massachusetts, Connecticut, and New Hampshire ; 
besides some general histories of New England, and 
several geographical and topographical works on 
OKio, Indiana, Illinois, and Missouri, containing 
histories of their settlements. Our national histo- 
ries, inferior in subordinate attractions to the ro- 
mantic historical fictions of Europe, are composed 



15 

of much more permanent and available materials. 
In biography, without equal means, have we not 
done as much since we began as our English mas- 
ters ? In the literature as well as the learning of 
the sciences, botany, mineralogy, metallurgy, en- 
tymology, ornithology, astronomy, and navigation, 
there is no reason to be ashamed ot our profi- 
ciency. In mathematics and chemistry, our com- 
parative deficiency is perhaps the most remarkable. 
In grammatical researches, particularly in the in- 
teresting elements of the Indian languages, Ame- 
rican erudition has preceded that of Europe, where 
some of the most learned and celebrated of the Ger- 
man and French philologists have caught from 
American publications, the spirit of similar inquiry. 
In natural and political geography our magnificent 
interior has produced great accomplishments, sci- 
entific and literary. The maps of America have 
been thought worthy of imitation in Europe. Mr. 
Tanner's Atlas, lately published, is the fruit of 
a large investment of money and time, and reflects 
credit on every branch of art employed in its exe- 
cution. The surveys of the coast now making by 
government, will be among the most extensive, ac- 
curate, and important memorials extant. Several 
scientific expeditions have likewise been sent by 
the government at different times into the western 
regions, whose vast rivers, steppes and deltasJhave 
been explored by learned men, whose publications 
enrich many departments of science, and are incor- 
porated with applause into the useful literature of 
the age. One of th« most copious and authentic 



1(5 

istatislical works in print, is an American produc- 
tion, which owes its publication to the patronage 
of Congress. The public libraries, particularly 
those of Cambridge Universit}^ of the New York 
Historical Society, of the American Philosophical 
Society, of the city of Philadelphia, of Congress, 
and others which might be enumerated, abound 
with proof and promise of the flourishing condition 
and rapid advancesofliterature and science through- 
out America. A single newspaper of this city, 
contains advertisements, by a single bookseller, of 
more than one hundred and fifty recent publica- 
tions by American authors from the American 
press, comprehending romance, travels, moral phi- 
losophy, mineralogy, political and natural geogra- 
phy, poetry, biography, history, various scientific 
inquiries, and discoveries, botany, philology, ora- 
tory, chemistry applied to the arts, statistics, agri- 
cultural and horticultural treatises, strategy, me- 
chanics, and many other subjects. From this am- 
ple and creditable catalogue I may select for espe- 
cial notice the Journal of the Academy of Natural 
Sciences as a work of uncommon merit ; and the 
profound and elaborate report on Weights and 
Measures, as a laudable specimen of official func- 
tion. 

The first and the present Secretaries of the De- 
partment of State, who have both made reports on 
this important branch of scientific politics, rank 
among the foremost scholars of the age by their 
eminence in various literary and scientific attain- 
ments. The American state papers, generally, have 
received the homage of the most illustrious states- 



17 

i^en of England, for excellence in the princi 
ciples and eloquence of that philosophy which is 
the most extensively applied to the affairs of men : 
and their publications afford lara^e contributions to 
its literature. Whether any policy be preferable 
to another, is generally a merely speculative topic. 
But I may with propriety assert that the United 
States have been the most stedfast supporters of 
maritime liberality, of inter-national neutrality, and 
of the modern system of commercial equality. 
They were the first to outlaw the slave trade, and 
the first to declare it piratical. Great Britain is imi- 
tating their example in commercial, colonial, na- 
vigation, penal, and even financial, regulations. 
France, Spain, Italy, Portugal, parts of Germany, 
and South America, have in part adopted their po- 
litical principles. And in all the branches of politi- 
cal knowledge, the American mind has been distin- 
guished. 

The publication of books is so much cheaper in ' 
this country than in Great Britain, that nearly all 
we use are American editions. Accordinof to re- 
ports from the Custom-houses, made under a re- 
solution of the Senate in 1822, it appears that the 
importation of books bears an extremely small pro- 
portion to the American editions. The imported 
books are the mere seed. It is estimated that be- 
tween two and three millions of dollars worth of 
books are annually published in the United States. 
It is to be regretted, that literary property here is 
held by an imperfect tenure, there being no other 
protection for it than the provisions of an ineffi- 



18 

cient act of Congress, the impotent oftspring of an 
obsolete En2:lish statute. The inducement to take 
copyrights is therefore inadequate, and a large 
proportion of the most valuable American books are 
"published without any legal title. Yet there were 
one hundred and thirty five copy rights purchased 
from January 1822 to April 1823. There have 
been eight editions^ comprising 7500 copies of 
Stewart's Philosophy published here since its ap- 
pearance in Europe thirty years ago. Five hundred 
thousand dollars was the capital invested in one edi- 
tion of Rees' Cyclopoedia. Of a lighter kind of read- 
ing, nearly 200,000 copies of the Waverley no- 
vels, comprising 500,000 volumes, have issued 
from the American press in the last nine years. 
Four thousand copies of a late American novel 
were disposed of immediately on its publication. 
Five hundred dollars were paid by an enterpris- 
ing bookseller for a single copy of one of these 
novels, without any copy right, merely by prompt 
republication to gratify the eagerness to read it. 
Among the curiosities of American literature, I 
must mention the itinerant book trade. There are, 
I understand, more than two hundred wagons 
which travel through the country, loaded with 
books for sale. Many biographical accounts of 
diotinguished Americans are thus distributed. Fifty 
thousand copies of Mr. Weem's Life of Wash- 
inu:ton have been published, and mostly cir- 
culated in this way throughout the interior. I 
might add to these instances, but it is unneces- 
sary, and would be irksome. Education, the sci- 



\ 

19 

ences, the learned professions, the church, politics, 
together with ephemeral and fanciful publications, 
maintain the press in respectable activity. 

The modern manuals of literature and science, 
magazines, journals and reviews, abound in the 
United States, although they have to cope with 
a larger field of newspapers than elsewhere. The 
North American Review, of which about four thou- 
sand copies are circulated, is not surpassed in know- 
ledge or learning, is not equalled in liberal and 
judicious criticism, by its great British models, the 
Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviews, of which about 
four thousand copies are also published in the 
United States. Written in a pure, old English 
style, and, for the most part, a fine American spirit, 
the North American Review, superintends with 
ability the literature and science of America. 

Not less than a thousand newspapers, some of 
them with several thousand subscribers, are circu- 
lated in this country ; the daily fare of nearly every 
meal in almost every family; so cheap and common, 
that, like air and water, its uses are undervalued. 
But a free press is the great distinction of this age 
and country, and as indispensable as those elements 
to the welfare of all free countries. Abundant and 
emulous accounts of remarkable occurrences con- 
centrate and diffuse information, stimulate inquiry, 
dispel prejudices, and multiply enjoyments. Co- 
pious advertisements quicken commerce; rapid 
and pervading publicity is a cheap police. Above 
all the press is the palladium of liberty. An Ame- 
rican would forego the charms of France or Italy 



/ 

for tlie luxury of a large newspaper; which makes 
every post an epoch, and provides the barrenest 
corners of existence \vith an universal succeda- 
neum. Duly to appreciate the pleasures of it, like 
health or liberty, we must undergo their temporary 
privation. Nor is our experience of the licentious- 
ness of the press too dear a price to pay for its 
freedom. It is a memorable fact in the history of 
American newspapers, that while some of the most 
powerful have been consumed in the combustion 
of their own calumnies, on the other hand, the most 
permanent andflourishingare those least addicted to 
defamation. It is also a fact, that the most licenti- 
ous newspapers which have appeared in America, 
were edited by Europeans. The American standard 
is equally removed from the coarse licentiousness 
which characterises much of the English press, and 
the constraints of that of the rest of Europe — and this 
standard has been established, while state prosecu- 
tions have been falling into dislike. Our newspa- 
pers are regulated by a public tact much truer and 
stronger than such ordeals. The same ethereal in- 
fluence in a free temperature, is equally effective to 
preserve the good from obloquy, and to consign the 
unworthy to degradation. Where the press is per- 
fectly free, truth is an overmatch for detraction. 
Many of our public men have constantly enjoyed 
the public favour, in spite of intense abuse ; and 
have survived its oblivion, to receive a foretaste of 
posthumous veneration. Under the light of these 
results, the press has learned the value of temper- 
ance, and while all the avenues of private redress 



2i 

are open to those who choose to seek it, state prose- 
cutions have nearly disappeared. Irreligious, ob- 
scene, and seditious publications, are infinitely more 
common from the English than from the American 
press: scurrilous and libellous newspapers exist to 
be sure, but they are the lowest and most obscure 
of the vocation ; whereas in England, some of the 
most elevated and best patronised, are the most 
scandalous and personal. In the darker ages, dun- 
geons, scaffolds, torture, and mutilation, were the 
dreadful, but vain restraints put on the understand- 
ing. Can it be supposed, that in this enlightened 
jera, punishment, however mitigated, will do more 
than inflame it ? And what is the English law 
of public prosecution for libels, but a milder rem- 
nant of those principles ? By which, infidelity, blas- 
phemy, sedition, treason, and individual calumny, 
are provoked, disseminated and infuriated. Expe- 
rience has taught us, that the freedom of the press 
is the best protection against its abuse, and that its 
transient licentiousness is part of the very nature of 
the blessing itself. The splendid skies, forests and 
foliage of America, with which Europe has nothing 
of the kind to compare, are inseparable from those 
vicissitudes and extremities of weather and seasons, 
which, while menacing desolation, purify and sub- 
limate existence. This American deduction of the 
much apprehended postulate of the press, is obvi- 
ously and rapidly gaining converts in England, 
whence perhaps it may ukimately spread over Eu- 
rope, and abolish the pernicious alternatives there 

D 



2Ja 

prevalent. Without it, the press must cause con- 
vulsions, and retard the progress of the mind. 
The English newspaper press, much less free 
by law than the Ameiican, is in practice much 
more licentious. A late number of the Quarter- 
ly Review, (which is no mean authority on such 
a point) admits, in so many words, that the occu- 
pation of the English daily press is, to * do every 
thing that honor and honesty shrink from' : to 
which character the absence of decency should be 
sujieradded. The Attorney General protects go- 
vernment from libels ; but the Chancellor has 
brought about a most preposterous state of things 
between the right of literary property, and the want 
of right in obscene, blasphemous, or otherwise ille- 
gal subjects of that property. English party vitu- 
peration is much coarser and more personal than 
ours. But, without going into politics, it may suf- 
fice to notice the difference in other thincfs. There 
are vented in the London newspapers, regular and 
perennial streams of defilement — polluting police 
reports, details of inhuman amusements, pugilistic 
and others, indelicate particulars of various private 
occurrences, the infamous amours of the royal and 
noble, are catered for every day's repast, and de- 
manded with an eagerness which bespeaks a vitia- 
ted appetite. It seems to be thought that publicit3% 
like execution, deters from crimes, when assuredly^ 
they both stimulate their perpetration. There is 
another office of the English press, extremely dero- 
gatory to the press itself, and injurious to society. 
I mean the journalising private and domestic con- 



33 

cerns, and the most trivial transactions of social in- 
tercourse, for the gratification of a vanity, peculiar 
to the aristocracy of that kingdom. The effects of 
this proclamation of the common affairs of private 
life, can hardly fail to be injurious to the female 
character in particular, whose modesty and retire- 
ment are thus perpetually broken in upon. The 
American newspaper press is conducted in better 
taste, and with more dignity. 

From literature the transition is natural to the 
arts, which minister to usefulness, comfort and 
prosperity, individual and national. Under their 
authority to provide for the encouragement of the 
arts and sciences, the United States, in thirty 
years, have issued about four thousand four hun- 
dred patent rights for new and useful inventions, 
discoveries, and improvements. By the prevailing 
construction of the acts of Congress, American pa- 
tentees must be American inventors or improvers, 
and are excluded from all things before known or 
used in any other part or period of the world. The 
English law allows English patentees to monopo- 
lise the inventions, discoveries, and improvements 
of all the rest of the world when naturalised in Great 
Britain. Notwithstanding this remarkable disad- 
vantage, I believe the American list of discoveries 
is quite equal to the English. The specimens and 
models open to public inspection in the national re- 
pository at Washington, are equal, I understand, to 
any similar collections in England or France, and 
superior to those of any other country. It will 
hardly be expected that I should undertake to men- 



tion even the most remarkable articles of this im- 
mense museum, containing every element of practi- 
cal science, of mechanism, of refinement, and of 
skill. I may be allowed, however, to say that the 
cotton gin has been of more profit to the United 
States, than ten times all they ever received by in- 
ternal taxation ; that our grain mill machinery, ap- 
plied to the great staples of subsistence, is very su- 
perior to that of Europe ; that there are in the patent 
office models of more than twenty different power 
looms, of American invention, operated on, and 
weaving solely by extraneous power, steam, water, 
wind, animals, and otherwise ; and that the English 
machines for spinning have been so improved here, 
that low-priced cottons can be manufactured cheap 
enough to undersell the English in England, after 
defraying the charges of transportation. Where 
American ingenuity has been put to trial it has never 
failed. In all the useful arts, and in the philosophy 
of comfort, — that word, which cannot be translated 
into any other language, and uhich, though of En- 
glish origin, w as reserved for maturity in America, 
we have no superiors. If labour saving machinery 
has added the power of a hundred millions of hands 
to the resources of Great Britain, what must be the 
effect of it on the population and means of the 
United States ? Steam navigation, destined to have 
greater influence than any triumph of mind over 
matter, eqiial to gunpowder, to printing, and to the 
compass, worthy to rank in momentum with reli- 
gious reformation, and civil liberty, belongs to 
America. A member of this Society, in his elo- 



25 

quent appeal to the judgment of Great Britain, has 
argued this claim ibly on abstract reasoning. But, 
vviihout disputing the conceptions and experiments 
of England, France, and Scotland, of Worcester, 
Hulls, JufFrou, or Miller, or entering at all into the 
question of prior imagination, it has ahvays appeared 
to me that there is a plain principle on which to rest 
the rights of this country. Steam navigation was 
reserved for the genius of those rivers, on a single 
one of which there is already more than a hundred 
steam-boats, containing upwards of fourteen thou- 
sand tons, and in whose single sea port, fifty steam 
boats may be counted at one time. This was the 
meridian to reduce to practical results, whatever 
conceptions may have existed elsewhere on this 
subject. Necessity, the mother of this invention, 
was an American mother ; born, perhaps, on the 
shores of the Potomac, the Delaware, or the Hud- 
son, yet belonging to the Missouri, the Arkansas, the 
Mississippi, and the Pacific ocean. By a very use- 
ful book called the Western Navigator, (published 
in this city,) it appears that the entire length of the 
Mississippi river is 2500 miles, of ihe Missouri 
3000, of the Arkansas 2000, of the Red 1500; and 
from the recent works of Major Long and Mr. 
Schoolcraft, it is ascertained that a large number of 
great tributaries unite their waters with these prodi- 
gious floods, washing altogether, according to the 
summary of the author of the Western Navigator, 
in the valley of the Ohio, 200,000 square miles, 
in the valley of the Misssissippi proper, 180,000, 
in that of the Missouri, 500,000, and in that of 



S6 

the lower Mississippi, 330,000, giving a total of 
1,210,000 miles as the area of what is termed the 
Mississippi basin. Most if not all of these vast 
streams are innavigable but by steam boats, owing 
to the course of their currents and other circumstan- 
ces. These then are the latitudes of steam boats, which 
have been abandoned in some parts of Europe, as 
too large for their rivers, and too expensive for their 
travelling. — In less than ten years from this time, 
steam boats may pass from the great lakes of the 
north-west by canals to the Atlantic, thence to the 
isthmus of Darien, and across that to China and New 
Holland. They now ply like ferry boats from New 
York toPensacola,New Orleans and Havanna, with 
the punctuality and security, and more than the ac- 
commodation, of the best land carriage of Europe. 
Wherever this wonderful invention appears, over- 
coming the winds and waves by steam, measuring 
trackless ocean distances by the quadrant, and pro- 
tected from lightning by the rod, it displays in every 
one of these accomplishments the genius of Ame- 
rica. 

In the ordinary art of navigation, the construc- 
tion, equipment, and manipulation of vessels, com- 
mercial and belligerent, America is also conspicu- 
ous. The merchant vessels of the United States, 
manned w ith fewer hands, perform their voyages, 
generally, in one third less time than those of the 
only other maritime people to be compared with 
them. And without referring to the achievements of 
the American navy as credentials of courage or 
renown, 1 may with propriety remark, that an intel- 



S7 

ligent and scientific fabrication and application of 
arms, ammunition, ships, and all the materials of 
maritime warfare, are unquestionably demonstrated 
by their success in it. 

The mechanics, artisans, and laborers of this 
country are remarkable for a disposition to learn. 
Asserted European superiority has been of great 
advantage to America in preventing habitual re- 
pugnance to improvement, so common to all man- 
kind, especially the least informed classes. Supe- 
rior aptitude, versatility and quickness in the han- 
dicrafts, are the consequences of this disposition of 
our people. A mechanic in Europe is apt to con- 
sider it almost irreverent, and altogether vain to 
suppose that any thing can be done better than as 
he was taught to do it by his father or master. 
A house or ship, is built in much less time here than 
there. From a line of battle ship, or a steam engine, 
to a ten penny nail, in every thing, the mechani- 
cal genius displays itself by superior productions. 
The success of a highly gifted American mechani- 
cal genius now in England, seems to be owing in 
part to his adapting his improvements, by a happy 
ingenuity, to the preservation of machinery, for 
which several English mechanics have been en- 
riched and ennobled, but which wuuld have been 
superseded as useless had it not been thus rescued. 

If a ship, a plough and a house be taken as sym- 
bols of the primary social arts of navigation, agri- 
culture and habitation, we need not fear com- 
parisons vi'ith other people in any one of them. 
In the intellectual use of the elements, the com- 



S8 

binations and improvements of the earth and its 
products, of water, of air, and of fire, no greater 
protjress has been made in Europe within this cen- 
tury than in the United States. The houses, ships, 
carrian^es, tools, utensils, manufactures, implements 
of husbandry, conveniences, comforts, the whole 
circle of social refinement, are always equal, mostly 
superior here to those of the most improved nations. 
I do not speak of mere natural advantages, of being 
better fed, more universally housed and more com- 
fortably clothed, than any other people ; but ex- 
cepting the ostentatious, and extravagant, if not de- 
generate and mischievous, luxuries of a few in the 
capitals of Europe merely ; looking to the general 
average of civilisation, where does it bespeak more 
mind or display greater advancement? Internal 
improvements, roads, bridges, canals, water- works, 
and all the meliorations of intercourse, have been 
as extensively and as expensively made within the 
last ten years in the United States, as in probably 
any other country ; notwithstanding the sparseness 
of a population, of which scarcely half a million is 
concentrated in cities, and a slender capital. Five 
thousand post offices distribute intelligence through- 
out the United States with amazing celerity and 
precision over eighty thousand miles of post roads. 
The mail travels twenty-one thousand miles every 
day, compassing eight millions of miles in a year. 
There are twelve thousand miles of turnpike roads. 
Our facilities and habits of intercourse are unequal- 
led in Europe : almost annihilating the obstacles 
of space. Within two years from this time, when 



29 

ail the great canals now in progress shall be com- 
pleted, an internal navigation often thousand miles 
will belt this country from the great western valley 
to the waters of the Hudson and the Chesapeake. 
The New York canal and the Philadelphia water 
works are not surpassed, if equalled, by any simi- 
lar improvements m Europe within the period of 
their construction. 

The polite arts, painting, engraving, music, 
sculpture, architecture, the arts of recreation, amuse- 
ment, and pageantry, flourish most in the seats of 
dense population. Few of them thrive without the 
forcing of great capitals, the reservoirs of the refine- 
ments of ancient, sometimes declining, empire. 
Architecture is an art of state, whose master works 
are reserved for seats of goverment. The public 
edifices of Edinburgh or Liverpool, for instance, or 
those erected at any other provincial town within 
the last twenty years, bear no comparison to the 
costly and magnificent capitol, built, burnt, and re- 
built, within that period at Washington. Indeed, 
I believe that there are no public buildings which 
have been constructed at London during this cen- 
tury in so expensive and splendid a style. The 
Halls of the Senate, and of the Representatives at 
Washington, are in the relation of contrast with the 
Houses of Commons and the Lords in London, as 
to magnitude, magnificence and accommodation. 
And, if I am not mistaken, the only historical paint- 
ings of national events, which have ever been paid 
for by legislative appropriation, are those executed 
by an American artist for the walls of the capitol. 
E 



30 

To these imperfect views of education, literature, 
science, and the arts, I will add sketches of the 
American mind, as developed in legislation, juris- 
prudence, the medical profession and the church ; 
which, in this country, may be considered as the 
other cardinal points of intellectual exercise. 

Representation is the great distinction between 
ancient and modern government. Representation 
and confederation distinguish the politics of Ameri- 
ca, where representation is real and legislation pe- 
rennial. Thousands of springs, gushing from every 
quarter, eddy onward the cataract of representative 
democracy, from primary self-constituted assem- 
blies, to the State Legislatures, and the national 
Congress^ Three thousand chosen members re- 
present these United States, in five and twenty 
Legislatures. There are, moreover, innumerable 
voluntary associations under legislative regulations 
in their proceedings. I am within bounds in as- 
serting, that several hundred thousand persons as- 
semble in this country every year, in various spon- 
taneous convocations, to discuss and determine 
measures according to parliamentary routine. From 
bible societies to the lowest handicraft there is no 
impediment, but every facility, by law, to their or- 
ganisation : And we find not only harmless but 
beneficial, those various self-created associations, 
which in other countries give so much trouble and 
alarm. It is not my purpose to consider the politi- 
cal influences of these assemblies, nor even their 
political character. But their philosophical effect 
on the individuals composing them, is to sharpen 



31 

their wits, temper their passions, and cuhivate their 
elocution : While this almost universal practice of 
political or voluntary legislation, could hardly fail 
to familiarise a great number of persons with its 
proprieties. The mode of transacting business is 
nearly the same in them all, from the humblest de- 
bating club to Congress in the capitol. Legislation 
in the United States is better ordered, more de- 
liberative, decorous, and dignified, much less tumul- 
tuous or arbitrary and more eloquent than in Europe. 
Contin ual changes of the political representatives, af- 
ford not less than ten thousand individuals spread 
throughout the United States, practically familiar 
with the forms and principles of legislation, who, 
through the vivid medium of a free press, constitute, 
as it were, an auditory greatly superior to that of any 
other nation. A large proportion of this great 
number of practical legislators, is qualified by the 
habits of discussion incident to such employment, 
and perfect freedom, to deliver their sentiments in 
public speaking ; which, being in greater request, 
of greater efficacy, and at greater liberty in Ameri- 
ca than in Europe, is naturally more prevalent and 
powerful here than there. It is a striking view of 
the ideas of legislation in Europe, that within the 
last thirty years France and Spain have waged de- 
structive wars for legislatures, consisting of single 
assemblies ; a constitution, which in America, 
would not be thousfht worth so much bloodshed. 

The much abused French revolution, has given 
to that country a Legislature of two houses, and a 
press of considerable freedom. But the peers are 



33 

lost in the secrecy of their sessions : and the de- 
puties can hardly be called a deliberative assem- 
blv. Few speak, inasmuch as most of the orations 
are read from a pulpit : and still fewer listen, 
amidst the tumults that agitate the whole body. To 
crown these frustrations of eloquent debate, when, 
it becomes intense and critical, as it must be, to do 
its offices, the proceedings are sometimes closed 
by an armed force, marched in to seize and expel 
an obnoxious orator. This is certainly not the 
philosophy of legislation. 

In Great Britain, an excessive number is crowded 
into an inconvenient apartment, where but few at- 
tempt to speak, and few can be brought to listen : 
and where both speakers and hearers are disturbed 
by tumultuous shouts and unseemly noises, not, ac- 
cording to our ideas, consonant with either eloquent 
or deliberative legislation. In theory, the House of 
Commons contains nearly 700 members : in prac- 
tice the most important laws are debated and en- 
acted by sixty or fifty. Owing to the want of per- 
sonal accommodation, when the house is crowded, 
its divisions to be counted are attended with great 
confusion. Most of the bills are drafted, not by 
members, but by clerks hired for that purpose : to 
which is owing much of the inordinate tautology 
and technicality of modern acts of Parliament. In 
theory and principle there is no audience, and in 
fact, bystanders are not permitted but occasionally,, 
under inconvenient restrictions. Reports and pub 
lications of the debates are unauthorised, and of 
course imperfect, notwithstanding the exploits of 



33 

stenography. Althousjh Parliament is omnipotent, 
yet a member may not publish abroad what he says 
in his place, without incurring itrnominious punish- 
ment as a libeller: which punishment was actually 
inflicted not lon^ ago on a peer, proceeded against 
by information, for that offence. In France, the 
press is, in this respect, freer than in England. The 
publication of speeches in the Legislature is consi- 
dered an inviolable right, which, among all the re- 
vocations of the present government, has never been 
molested or called in question. By a perversion 
of the hours, unknown, I believe, in any other 
country or age, most of the business of Parliament 
is done in the dead of night, to which, probably, 
manv of the irreo-ularities now mentioned are as- 
cribable. The great popular principles which 
have preserved the British Parliament, while 
every other similar attempt in Europe has fail- 
ed, or nearly so, and its brilliant political per- 
formances, have recommended it to admiration, 
notwithstanding these disadvantages ; and in- 
deed sanctioned them as part of the system. 
But unprejudiced judgment must allow, that all 
these are imperfections which have no place in 
Congress. Hence it is, that there are not now, and 
probably never were at any one time, more than 
two or three members of Parliament actuated by 
the great impulses of oratory : and that the talent 
of extemporaneous and useful eloquence always has 
been much more common in Congress. Burke's 
inimitable orations, which all ages will read with 
deli<?ht, were delivered to an emptv house. A 



34? 

member, now a peer, himself one of the most elo- 
quent men of England, whose political and per- 
sonal ties bound him particularly to remain during 
the delivery of one of these master-pieces, after near- 
ly every body else had withdrawn, actually crawled 
out of the house to escape unnoticed from an intole- 
rable scene. Johnson, the editor of Chatham's fam- 
ous speeches, in a number of the Rambler, treats 
the graces of eloquence with elaborate ridicule and 
contempt ; and Hume, in his Essay on Eloquence, 
and Blair, in his Lectures on Rhetoric, acknowledge 
that they are not characteristics of British oratory. 
The printed speeches of England are among the finest 
specimens of the art of composition ; but it is notori- 
ous that in parliament and at the bar the most celebra- 
ted speeches avail nothing with those to whom they 
are addressed ; and eloquence, in the pulpit of the 
established church is, I believe, a thing unheard of. 
The talent of effective oratory is much more com- 
mon in America, where laws are made, controver- 
sies are settled, and proselytes are gained, by it, 
every day. An eloquent professor or lecturer, in 
England, is very rare, if there be any such. While 
it is well known that the medical school of Phila- 
delphia owes its success, in part, to the mere elo- 
quence of its lecturers. Crowds of listeners are 
continually collected in all parts of this country to 
hear eloquent speeches and sermons. The legis- 
lature, the court house, and the church, are throng- 
ed with auditors of both sexes, attracted by that 
talent which was the intense study and great power 
of the ancient orators. Thought, speech, and ac- 
tion, must be perfectly free to call forth the utmost 



35 

powers of this mighty art. It requires difficulties ; 
but it needs hopes. Its temples in free countries 
are innumerable. When its rites are adminis- 
tered the most divine of human unctions searches 
the marrow of the understanding ; the orator is 
inspired, the auditor is absorbed, by the occasion. 
Annual sessions of five and twenty legislatures 
multiply laws, which produce a numerous bar, in 
all ages the teeming offspring of freedom. Their 
number in the Unired States has been lately com- 
puted at six thousand ; which is probably an un- 
der estimate. American lawyers and judges ad- 
here with professional tenacity to the laws of the 
mother country. The absolute authority of recent 
English adjudications is disclaimed : but they are 
received with a respect too much bordering on sub- 
mission. British commercial law, in many respects, 
inferior to that of the continent of Europe, is becom- 
ing the law of America. The prize law of Great Bri- 
tain was made that of the U. States by judicial legis- 
lation durino- flagrant war between the two countries. 
The homage lately paid by the English prime 
minister to the neutral doctrines proclaimed by the 
American government, in the beginning of the 
French revolution, which declares them worthy 
the imitation of all neutral nations, may teach us 
that the American state papers contain much better 
principles of international jurisprudence than the pas- 
sionate and time-serving, however brilliant, sophisms 
of the British admiralty courts. On the other 
hand, English jurisprudence, while silently availing 
itself of that of all Europe, and adopting without 



S6 

owning it, has seldom if ever made use of an Ame- 
rican law book, recommended by the same lan- 
guage, system, and subject matter. American 
translations of foreign jurists, on subjects in which 
the literature of English law is extremely deficient, 
appear to be less known in England than transla- 
tions of the laws of China. This veneration on 
our part, and estrangement on theirs, are infirmities 
characteristic of both. Our professional bigotry 
has been counteracted by penal laws in some of 
the States against the quotation of recent British 
precedents, as it was once a capital offence in Si>ain 
to cite the civil law, and as the English common 
law has always repelled that excellent code from 
its tribunals. I cannot think, with the learned edi- 
tor of the Law Register, that late English law books 
are a dead expense to the American bar ; or that, 
in his strong phrase, scarcely an important case is 
furnished by a bale of their reports. But I deplore 
the colonial acquiescence in which they are adopt- 
ed too often without probation or fitness. The use 
and respect of American jurisprudence in Great 
Britain will begin only when we cease to prefer 
their adjudications to our own. By the same means 
we shall be relieved from disadvantageous restric- 
tions on our use of British wisdom; and our system 
will acquire that level to which it is entitled by the 
education, learning, and purity of those by whose 
administration it is formed. 

In their national capacity, the United States have 
no common law, but all the original States are go- 
verned by that of England, with adaptations. In 



37 

one of the new States, in which the French, Spanish, 
and English laws, happen to be all naturalised, an 
attempt at codification from all these stocks is mak- 
ing, under legislative sanction. In others, possibly 
all of the new States, which have been carved out of 
the old, a great question is in agitation whether the 
English common law is their inheritance. Being 
a scheme of traditional precepts and judicial prece- 
dents, that law requires continual adjudications, with 
their reasons at large, to explain, replenish, and en- 
force it. Of these reports, as they are termed, no 
less than sixty four, consisting of more than two 
hundred volumes, and a million of pages, have al- 
ready been uttered in the United States ; most of 
them in the present century ; and in a ratio of great 
increase. The camel's load of cases, which is said 
to have been necessary to gain a point of law in the 
decline of the Roman empire, is therefore already 
insufficient for that purpose in the x\merican. Add 
to which, an American lawyer's library is incom- 
plete without a thousand volumes of European le- 
gists, comprehending the most celebrated French, 
Dutch, Italian, and German treatises on n?.tural, 
national, and maritime law, together with all the 
English chancery and common law. I have heard 
of an American lawyer of eminence whose whole 
property is said to consist in a large and expensive 
law library. 

Notwithstanding this mass of literature, the law 

has been much simplified in transplantation from 

Europe to America : and its professional as well as 

political tendencv is still to further simplicity. The 

F 



38 

brutal, ferocious, and inhuman laws of the feudists^ 
as they were termed by the civilians, (I use their 
own phrase,) the arbitrary rescripts of the civil law, 
and the harsh doctrines of the common law, have 
all been melted down by the genial mildness of Ame- 
rican institutions. Most of the feudal distinctions be- 
tween real and personal property, complicated te- 
nures andprimogenitiire, the salique exclusion of fe- 
rn ties, the unnatural rejection of the half-blood, and 
ante-nuptial offspring, forfeitures for crimes, the pe- 
nalties of alienage, and other vices of P^uropean 
jurisprudence, which nothing but their existence 
can defend, and reason must condemn, are either 
abolished, or in a course of abrogation here. Cog- 
nisance of marriage, divorce, and posthumous ad- 
ministration, taken from ecclesiastical, has been 
conferred on the civil tribunals. Voluminous con- 
veyancing and intricate special pleading, among 
the cosdiest mysteries of pnjfessional learning in 
Great Britain, have given place to the plain and 
cheap substitutes of the old common law. With a 
like view to abridge and economise litigation, co- 
ercive arbitration, or equivalents for it, have been 
tried by legislative provision; jury trial, the great safe- 
guard of personal security, is nearly universal, and 
ought to be quite so, for its invaluable political influ- 
ences. It not only does justice between the litigant 
parties, but elevates the understanding and enlightens 
the rectitude of all the community. Sanguinary and 
corporal punishments arc yielding to the interesting 
experiment of penitential confinement. Judicial 
officiaj tenure is mostly independent of legislative 



39 

interposition, and completely of executive influence. 
The jurisdiction of the courts, is far more exten- 
tensive and elevated than that of the mother coun- 
try. They exercise, among other high political 
functions, the original and remarkable power of in- 
validating statutes, by declaring them unconstitu- 
tional : an ascendancy over politics never before or 
elsewhere asserted by jurisprudence, which autho- 
rises the weakest branch of a popular government 
to annul the measures of the strongest. If popular 
indignation sometimes assails this authority, it has 
seldom if ever been able to crush those who have 
honestly exercised it ; and even if it should, though 
an individual victim might be immolated, his very 
martyrdom would corroborate the system for which 
he suffered. Justice is openly, fairly, and purely 
administered, freed from the absurd costumes and 
ceremonies which disfigure it in England. Judi- 
cial appointment is less influenced by politics ; and 
judicial proceedings more independent of political 
considerations. 

The education for the bar is less technical, their 
practice is more intellectual, the vocation is rela- 
tively at least more independent in the United 
States, than in Great Britain. Here, as there, it is 
a much frequented avenue to political honours. All 
the chief justices of the United States have filled 
eminent political stations, both abroad and at home. 
Of the five Presidents of the United States, four 
were lawyers ; of the several candidates at pre- 
sent for that office, most, if not all, are lawyers. 
But without any public promotion, American so- 



4U 

ciety has no superior to the man who is advanced 
in any of the liberal professions. Hence there are 
more accompUshed individuals in professional life 
here, than where this is not the case. Under other 
governments, patronage will advance the unworthy, 
and power will oppress the meritorious. Even in 
France, where there are, and always have been law- 
yers of great and just celebrity, we sometimes see 
that for exerting the noblest, and, in free countries, 
the most common duties of their profession, for re- 
sisting the powerful and defending the weak, they 
are liable to irresponsible arrest, imprisonment, and 
degradation, without the succour and sanctuary of 
a free press, and dauntless public sympathy. In 
Great Britain, it is true, there is no such apprehen- 
sion to deter them : and equally true, that profes- 
sional, as well as political d'^gnities, are free to all 
candidates. But the ascendancy of rank, the con- 
tracted divisions of intellectual labour, the techni- 
cality of practice, combine with other causes to 
render even the English individuals, not perhaps 
inferior lawyers, but suborbinate men. 

British jurisprudence itself, too, that sturdy and 
inveterate common law, to which Great Britain 
owes many of the great popular conservative prin- 
ciples of her constitution — even these have been 
impaired by long and terrible wars, during which, 
shut up within their impregnable island, the offspring 
of Alfred and of Edward, infusing their passions, 
their politics, and their prejudices into their laws, 
have wrenched them to their occasions. The dis- 
tinguishing attributes and merits of the common 



41 

law are, that it is popular and mutable ; takes its 
doctrines from the people, and suits them to their 
views. While the American judiciary enforces 
this system of jurisprudence, may it never let wars, 
or popular passions, or foreign influences, impair its 
principles. 

There are about ten thousand physicians in the 
United States, and medical colleges for their edu- 
cration in Massachusetts, Rhode-Island, Connecti- 
cut, New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Ohio. 
There are also two medical universities in the state 
of New York, one in Pennsylvania, one in Mary- 
land, one in Massachusetts, and one in Kentucky ; 
containing altogether about twelve hundred stu- 
dents. Under the impulses of a new climate and 
its peculiar distempers, the medical profession has 
been pursued and its sciences developed with great 
zeal and success in this country ; whose necessities 
have called forth a bolder and more energetic treat- 
ment of diseases, more discriminating and philoso- 
phical, as well as decisive and efficient ; a more 
scientific assignment of their causes, and ascertain- 
ments of their nature. Many medical errors and 
prejudices, now abandoned in Europe, were first re- 
futed here. What is justly termed a national cha- 
racter, has been given to the medical science of 
America, and American medical literature is cir- 
culated and read in Europe, where several Ameri- 
can medical discoveries and improvements have 
been claimed as European. Anatomy, the most 
stationary of the medical sciences, is ardently culti- 
vated, and has been advanced by discoveries in the 



4S 

American schools. Valuable contributions have 
been made to physiology, and more rational views 
inculcated of animal economy. An American dis- 
covery in chemistry has distinguished its author 
throughout Europe : Where the achievements of 
this master spirit of sciences, while, to be sure they 
leave ours behind, yet encourage it to an applica- 
tion full of promise. It is a merit of the American 
schools, at least, to have accurately defined the 
bounds of chemistry and physiology. Our diver- 
sified soils and climates, afford inexhaustible heal- 
ing and balsamic plants, many of which have been 
adopted into the materia medica, and displayed in 
publications creditable to the literature and some of 
the fine arts, as well as the science of this country. 
And the bowels of this continent are rich with 
sanative minerals, some of which, likewise, have 
been extracted and made known both to science and 
by literature. Mr. Cleaveland's treatise on mine- 
ralogy is, I believe, used as a text book in Great 
Britain. 

American physicians are probably unrivalled in 
the knowledge and use of what are termed the 
heroic remedies. They have introduced new and 
rational doctrines respecting the operation of reme- 
dies ; combatting the notion of their reception into 
the circulation, and referring it to the principle of 
sympathy. They deny the asserted identity of 
remedies ; believing, that they have succeeded in 
proving an essential difference in their operation, 
not only in degree, but in effect. The American 
improvements in Surgery are too numerous, and 



*3 

though not the less important, too minute and tech- 
nical, to be generalised in a summary. Its appa- 
ratus, mechanism, and operations, have been im- 
proved by a theory and practice equal in science, 
skill and success, to any in the world. But its 
greatest melioration is philosophical. The founder 
■of most of the improvements in surgery alluded 
to, deeming its most skilful operations, but imper- 
fections in the preserving art, reserves them for its 
last resort, never to be performed till all means of 
natural cure prove abortive. On this exalted prin- 
ciple the great Hunter taught and practised ; unit- 
ing humanity and philosophy to science and art ; 
a benefactor, whose original and admirable sug- 
gestions it is the merit of American physicians and 
surgeons to have introduced into their practice in 
this country, before their imputed innovations were 
reconciled to pre-conceived opinions in his own. 

Midwifery, both practical and theoretical, has also 
received essential improvements in the American 
school, some of which have been declared by high 
authority to mark an ccra in the obstetric practice. 
In the theory and practice of medicine, the im- 
provements are too many and important for my 
recital. The gastric pathology, the prevailing 
ti-eatment and theory of hydrokephalus, and of drop- 
sies in general, the boasted European practice in 
marasmus, the cure of the croup, of gout by evac- 
uations, the arrest of malignant erisipelas, and of 
mortification, and of inflamation of the veins; in 
short, a long list of remedial systems, which might 
be enumerated, though claimed in Europe, belong 



41 

to America. The vaunted suggestion of Europe, 
that fever originates in sympathetic irritation, and 
that venesection and other evacuations are requi- 
site in the primary stages of it, have long been the 
estabhshed doctrines of America, where they were 
first demonstrated. American medical science 
and skill have outstripped those of the rest of the 
world, Europe included, in the character and treat- 
ment of epidemics and pestilences. In this great 
field, Europe has done little, while the progress of 
America has been great. Bigoted to antiquated 
notions the medical science of the old world has 
stagnated for centuries in prejudices, which have 
been expelled in the new, where the causes, na- 
ture, laws, and treatment of these destructive visi- 
tations have been ascertained and systematised, 
English critics particularly dwell with exultation on 
their supposed late triumphs over these distem- 
pers. Divested of the long prevalent notion of de- 
bility and putrescency, they nov^^ urge depletion 
as if the suggestion were their own, whereas thirty 
years have elapsed since the physicians of this 
country were in the full employment of it. 

The theory and practice of medicine, the fearless 
and generous resistance of pestilential disease, sug- 
gest a recollection of a late medical professor here, 
whose works are in the libraries of the learned in 
many countries, and in several languages, whose fas- 
cinating manners and eloquent lectures largely con- 
tributed to thefoundation of a flourishing school, whose 
zeal, if some times excessive, was characteristic of 
genius, mid the pioneer of success ; whose services. 



45 

iet me add, as a patriot, and a philantropist, shed a 
divine lustre on his career as a physician. The 
first leading man to lay down his life in batde in the 
American revolution, was an eminent physician. 
The best historian of that period, was also an emi- 
nent physician : And in a country, which knows no 
grade above that of the eminent in learning; and 
usefulness, there have been, and there are, many 
others of this profession to whom more than pro- 
fessional celebrity belongs. They frequently unite 
political with professional distinctions. Many of 
the members of this profession, have filled various 
stations in every branch of our government. Many 
of them at this moment, occupy high executive and 
legislative public offices. The pernicious and de- 
grading system which subdivides labour infini- 
tesimally — a system useful perhaps for pin-makers, 
but most injurious in all the thinking occupations — 
has no countenance in America. The American 
physician practices pharmacy, surgery, midwifery ; 
and is cast on his own resources for success in all 
he does : The consequence of which is, that he is 
forced to think more for himself, and of course to 
excel. In Europe, successful physicians are too 
often made so by favour or chance. They are, 
moreover, the luxuries of the metropolis and a few 
great cities. Throughout the interior of England, 
generally, the medical attendant is an uneducated 
apothecary, whose science stops at the compound- 
ing of a drug, or the opening of a vein. Even in 
London, this class is always in reserve to succeed 
the preliminary and expensive visits of the doctor : 
G 



46 

w hose employment, besides, depends too much on 
the recommendation of these subordinates. In this 
country, medical skill is much more generally dis- 
tributed. Elvery hamlet, every region abounds 
with educated physicians, whose qua'ifications to 
be sure, ultimately depend much on their opportu- 
nities : But who, at least for the most part, begin 
with the recommendations of diplomas. 

Perhaps the most humane discovery in modern 
medicine is vaccination ; to which America has no 
claim : though superior intelligence here has given 
it much greater effect, than among the ignorant 
j)opulace of Europe. The doctrine of non-conta- 
gion in pestilential distempers, should it be esta- 
blished, must also enjoy great credit as a triumph 
for humanity. The most distressing prejudices 
concerning contagion, are not yet extirpated in Eu- 
rope. I am not authorised to consider a disbelief 
in this shocking aggravation of any malady, as a 
point in which the medical profession of America 
is quite unanimous with respect to yellow fever: 
but a foreign physician, who lately collected their 
opinions, ascertained the ratio of non-contagionists 
to be 567 to 28 contagionists. A late French am- 
bassador in this country, who was bred a physician, 
has publicly claimed the merit of the discovery of 
non-contagion for another French physician, who 
was in practice in this city in 1793, and is now in the 
service of the king of France. But in a treatise on 
the yellow fever by Dr. Hillary, published sixty 
years ai';o, its contagion is explicitly denied by the 
unqualified declaration, that * it has nothing of a 



pestilential or contagious nature in it.' That this 
is not the sentiment prevalent in France, would 
seem to be inferrible from recent events. A French 
army was stationed at the foot of the Pyrennees, as 
a sanitory cordon, to prevent the passage of conta- 
gion over those lofty, and frost crowned mountains. 
Whatever may be the theories or reveries of a few, 
therefore, it is a remarkable proof of the actual state 
of the public intelligence on this subject, not only 
in France, but throughout Europe, that all inquiries 
concerning the cause of this apparently warlike 
demonstration were silenced by assurances that its 
design was to repel contagious disease : under 
which assertion the wisdom of Europe rested, till 
the plans thus masked were ripe for execution. 

I shall conclude with some views of the Ameri- 
can church ; which I hope to be able to shew is 
as justly entitled to that distinctive appellation as 
the church of Rome, the church of England, the 
Galilean church, the Greek church, or any others, 
to theirs respectively. 

It is the policy or the prejudice of governments, 
■which use the church as an engine of state, to de- 
cry institutions which separate them, and leave re- 
ligion to self-regulation. They are accused of infi- 
delity and immorality. The want of ecclesiastical 
respectability is inferred from its want of political 
protection and influence. These Pagan doctrines 
have prevailed where ever Christianity has been 
unknown. They were Egyptian, Grecian, Ro- 
man ; they are Mahometan. But they cannot en- 
dure the light of reason and truth. Whoever reads 



48 

the text book of Christianity must be ccnvinced 
that it is the religion of self-government. No Eu- 
ropean dogma is more unfounded than that repub- 
licanism and infidelity are coadjutors. Intelligent 
men in the United States, with much more unani- 
mity and sincerity than in Europe, believe that 
without religion humanity would be forlorn and bar- 
barous. And in no country are those ecclesiastical 
classes and cures, which have formed parts of the 
institutions of religion, in all times, better establish- 
ed than in this. In estimating the progress and con- 
dition of the mind in America, therefore, I have 
neither disposition nor occasion to deny, that the 
condition of religion is one of the best tests of the 
general intellectual state. Independently of their 
help in the cure of souls, the clergy have always 
rendered the most important services to the human 
understanding. Learning and science were long 
in their exclusive care. In those periods when the 
mind was most depressed, the church was the 
chancery of its preservation. To it we owe nearly 
all the best relics of ancient learning: from it, we 
still receive much of our education ; for here, as 
elsewhere, most of our teachers are ecclesiastics. 
It is therefore a very interesting inquiry how the 
church and its ministers, who are also the ministers 
of education, fare in any community. 

Segregation from political connection and tolera- 
tion are the cardinal principles of the American 
church. On the continent of Europe, toleration 
means, where it is said to exist, catholic supre- 
macy suffering subordinate protestantism. In the 



49 

united kins^dom of Great Britain and Ireland, it 
means a protestant hierarchy, abetted by dissenters, 
excliidini): catholics from political privileges, and 
subjecting them to double ecclesiastical imposi- 
tions. France, Italy, Ireland, and Spain, have been 
desolated by contests between church and state. 
Toleration has won at least part of these bloody 
fields. But a segregated church does not appear 
to have made any advance in Europe. In the 
United States, both of these principles are not only 
fundamental political laws, but ancient, deep-seated 
doctrines, whose bases were laid long before poli- 
tical sovereignty was thought of, when Williams, 
Penn and Baltimore, by a remarkable coincidence, 
implanted them in every quarter, and in every creed. 
American toleration, means the absolute inde- 
pendence and equality of all religious denomina- 
tions. American segregation, means, that no hu- 
man authority can in any case whatever control 
or interfere with the rights of conscience. Ade- 
quate trial of these great problems, not less momen- 
tous than that of political self-goverenment, has 
proved their benign solution. Bigotry, intolerance, 
blood thirsty polemics waste themselves in harm- 
less, if not useful, controversy, when government 
takes no part. We enjoy a religious calm and har- 
mony, not only unknown, but inconcievable, in 
Europe. We are continually receiving accessions 
of their intolerance, which is as constantly disarmed 
by being let alone. Our schools, families, legis- 
latures, society find no embarrassment from varie- 
ties of creed, which in Europe would kindle the 
deadliest discord. 



50 

That these consequences are not the fruits of 
lukevvarmness and disregard to religion, remains td 
be shewn. 

I shall touch but lightly on the dissenting church, 
as it is called in England ; not because its condition 
in the United States is not worthy of regard, and a 
great argument for my object, but because its well 
known prosperity renders it almost unnecessary that 
I should dwell on any details of it. Always demo- 
cratic even in Europe, no reason can be imagined 
why it should not thrive in the aboriginal republi- 
canism of America, the natural and fruitful soil of 
spontaneous religion. Accordingly, there are up- 
wards of seven hundred congregational churches in 
the New England States alone, and nearly that num- 
ber of clergymen of that denomination, including 
pastors, unsettled ministers, and licensed preachers : 
from which enumeration I exclude the Baptists of 
that quarter, who are uniformly of the congregation- 
al order in church government. There is a theo- 
logical seminary at Andover, in Massachusetts, 
containing about one hundred and fifty students in 
divinity. At Harvard college, there is a theologi- 
cal professor of the Anti-trinitarian faith, with whom 
several resident graduates commonly study. Of 
the two hundred and thirty congregational minis- 
ters of Massachusetts, about seventy are Anti-trini- 
tarians. In Maine, there is a theological seminary, 
with two professors, and about forty pupils. Yale 
©ollege in Connecticut, has a theological depart- 
ment attached to it, in which there are three pro- 
fessors, and a considerable number of students. In 



51 

Comnall, in Connecticut, there is also a Heathen 
mission school, in which, about thirty youths, born 
in India, on the Pacific ocean, and the western 
wilds of this continent, or other heathen places, are 
educated with special reference to ministerial du- 
ties in their respective birth places. 

The Presbyterian church in the United States, in 
addition to the congregational, contains about nine 
hundred ministers, one hundred and thirty five li- 
centiates, one hundred and forty seven candidates, 
more than fourteen hundred churches, and last year 
administered the sacrament of the Lord's Supper to 
an hundred thousand communicants. It has theo- 
logical seminaries in the Slates of New Jersey, New 
York, and Tennessee : And, as is obvious from 
these indications, is established on broad and flour- 
ishing endowments. 

I shall also very summarily touch the condition 
of those enthusiastic, and, for the most part, itine- 
rant churches, which, ever since their first example 
in the appearance of the Franciscan and Dominican 
friars of the thirteenth century, in a similar manner 
and on similar occasions, have, under various titles, 
interposed their austere and reviving tenets, into the 
deserted or decaying quarters of Christianity; uhose 
popular and rallying doctrines have a highly bene* 
ficial influence on the morals of the community. 
The Methodist church of America contains three 
di' -cesses, eleven hundred itinerant clergy, exclu- 
sively clerical, and about three thousand stationary 
ministers, who attend also to other than ecclesiasti- 
cal occupations, 'ihey reckon twelve conferences, 



5S 

and more than twenty five hundred places of wor- 
ship. By the report to the Baptist convention, 
which sat in June last, at Washington, the places 
of worship of that persuasion are stated at more 
than two thousand three hundred; and they reckon 
a very large number of ministers. There are three 
theological seminaries of the Baptist church, one in 
New England, one in the interior of the State of 
New York, and one at the city of Washington. 
There were likewise two theological seminaries of 
the Methodist church, of whose services, however, 
it has been for the present deprived by accidental 
circumstances. It is a remarkable and most lau- 
dable characteristic of all these reliarious denomina- 
tions that their means are applied among other 
beneficial purposes, always liberally to that of edu- 
cation. 

The Universalists have one hundred and twenty 
preachers, two hundred separate societies, and eight 
periodical publications. The Lutheran, the Dutch 
Reformed, and Associate Reformed, the Moravians, 
the Friends, in short, almost an innumerable roll of 
creeds, have their several seminaries of education, 
their many places of worship, numerous clergy or 
preachers, and every other attribute of secular, as 
well as spiritual, religion in prosperity. 

To the clergy of some of these sects, especially 
the Presbyterian and Congregational, the American 
revolution is deeply indebted for its origin, pro- 
gress, and issue. The generous, yet jealous princi- 
ples of self-government, proclaimed as the motives 
of that event, have no more steadfast, uniform, or 



53 

invincible adherents, than their followers. Pole- 
mical literature, metaphysical knowledge, pulpit 
eloquence, philological learning, invigorating the 
mind, and giving it power over the world, are su- 
peradded to the laborious and self-denyed lives and 
pure ministry of these ecclesiastics. The dissen- 
ters in England form, no doubt, a body of learned 
and zealous divines : but from the time when Eng- 
land first sent her sons to New England to learn 
and teach theology to the present day, the Ameri- 
can dissenting church, is, at least equal to that of 
the mother country in intelligence and influence, 
and much superior in eloquence. 

But it is on the American church of England and 
the American church of Rome, that we may dwell 
with most complacency. Here, where no political 
predominance, no peculiar, above all, no mysteri- 
ous, inquisitorial, arbitrary, or occult polity, no 
tythes, no titles, peerage, crown, or other such 
appliances sustain the ministry, where the cro- 
sier is as plain as the original cross itself, and the 
mitre does not sparkle with a single brilliant torn 
from involuntary contribution, — it is here, I venture 
to say, that within the last century, the church of 
England and the church of Rome have construct- 
ed more places of worship, (relatively speaking,) 
endowed more diocesses, founded more religious 
houses, and planted a stronger pastoral influence, 
than in any other part of the globe. It is in the 
United States of America, under the power of Ame- 
rican religion that the English and Roman Catholic 

chuicaes are Nourishing. 
H 



54 

Until the revolution, the church of England was 
the estabished church in all the American colonies. 
In Maryland and Virginia, where it was most firmly 
seated, a sort of modus or composition for tythes 
was assessed by law, either on the parishes or by 
the polls. In Virginia there were moreover glebes 
annexed to the parish churches. In New York, 
there was also a fund taken from the public money, 
appropriated to the few parishes established there. 
Throughout New England, Pennsylvania, and the 
other colonies, if I am not misinformed, though the 
church of England was the national church, yet it 
languished in great infirmity, having no other sup- 
port than the pew rents and voluntary assessments 
which now, under a very different regimen, supply 
adequate resources for all the occasions of an es- 
tablishment which has no rich, and no very poor 
pastorates. 

The whole of these vast regions, by a gross or- 
dinance of colonial misrule, were attached to the 
London diocess. Most of the incumbents, it may 
be supposed, those especially supported by tythes, 
at such a distance from the diocesan, were supine 
and licentious. As soon as the revolution put a 
stop to their stipends, they generally ceased to offi- 
ciate : and in Maryland and Virginia, particularly, 
the Methodists and Baptists stepped in to their de- 
serted places. The crisis for the church of Eng- 
land at this conjuncture, was vital. Several of its 
ministers at first joined their compatriots for the 
independence declared. But few endured unto the 
end of the struggle. When the enemy were in 



&5 

possession oF Philadelphia, then the capital of the 
country, where Congress sat, and that inimitable 
assembly was driven to resume its deliberations 
at the village of Yorktown, they elected for their 
chaplain, a clergyman of the church of England, 
who had been expelled his home in this city by 
its capture. Every ingenuous mind will do justice 
to the predicament in which such an election placed 
an American pastor of the English church. The 
cause of independence, to which he was attached 
was in ruin ; the government forced from its seat, 
the army routed and disheartened, the country 
prostrate and nearly subdued by a triumphant 
enemy in undisputed occupation of the capital. 
The chaplain elected by Congress under such 
©ircumstances proved worthy of their confidence. 
Without other attendant, protection, or encour- 
agement, than the consciousness of a good cause, 
he repaired to the retreat of his country's ab- 
ject fortunes, to offer daily prayers from the 
bosom of that immortal assembly which never 
despaired of them, to the almighty providence, 
by which they were preserved and prospered. 
The chaplain of Congress, at Yorktown, has 
been rewarded for those days of trial. Already, 
in the compass of his own life, and ministry, he is 
at the head of the ten bishoprics into which the 
American church of England has since then ex- 
panded in the United States, with three hundred and 
fifty clergymen, about seven hundred churches, a 
theological seminary, and every other assurance of 



56 

substantial prosperity. Within liislife time there vvaS 
but one, and at the commencement of his ministry 
but three episcopnl churches in Philadelphia, and they 
in jeopardy of the desecration from which they were 
saved by his patriotic example and pious influence. 
It would be an unjust and unacceptable homage, 
however, tohim, not to declare that the intrinsic tem- 
perance and resource of popular government mainly 
contributed to the preservation of the English 
church in America, where it has since advanced 
far more than in the mother country, during the 
same period, and where it is probably destined to 
flourish greatly beyond the English example. Of 
this there can be no doubt if it thrives henceforth 
as it has done heretofore: for under the presidency of 
a single prelate, still in the effective performance of 
all the duties of a good bishop, and a good citizen, 
the American church of England, without a particle 
of political support, has, as we have seen, extended 
itself. Within a few years a million of pounds sterling- 
were appropriated by parliament, on the special re- 
commendation of the crov\Ti of Great Britain, for 
the. repair and construction of churches; with 
views doubtless to political as much as to religious 
consequences. I venture to predict that within 
the period to elapse from that appropriation to its 
expenditure, a larger sum of money will have been 
raised in the United States by voluntary subscrip- 
tion, and expended for similar purposes and to 
greater effect. 
The Roman catholic church grows as vigorously 



57 

as any other in the soil and atmosphere of America. 
The late (first) archbishop of that church, likewise 
adhered with unshaken and zealous constancy to 
the cause of the American revolution : and indeed, 
served for it in a public station. His illustrious 
relative is one of the three signers of a charter, 
destined to have more influence on mankind than 
any uninspired writing, who have lived to enjoy its 
developements during half a century; in which pe- 
riod, all North and South America have been re- 
generated, and the most intelligent portions of Eu- 
rope quickened with the spirit of that political 
scripture. He periled a million of dollars when 
he pledged his fortune to the declaration of inde- 
pendence : as to the short sighted, the patriot priest 
might have seemed to risk his religion when he 
abjured European allegiance. But neither of them 
has had reason to regret the effects of self-govern- 
ment on a faith of which they have both, at all 
times, been the American pillars and ornaments. 
From a mere mission in 1790, the Roman catholic 
establishment in the United States, has spread into 
an extended and imposing hierarchy ; consisting 
of a metropolitan see, and ten bishoprics, con- 
taining between eighty and a hundred churches, 
some of them the most costly and splendid ecclesi- 
astical edifices in the country, superintended by a- 
bout one hundred and sixty clergymen. The remo- 
test quarters of the U. States are occupied by these 
flourishing establishments ; from the chapels at 
Damascotti (in Maine) and at Boston, to those of 
St. Augustine in Florida, and St. Louis in Mis- 



58 

souri. Thefe are catholic seminaries at Bardstown 
and Frankfort in Kentucky, a catholic clerical se- 
minary in Missouri, catholic colleges at St. Louis 
and New Orleans, where there is likewise a catho- 
lic Lancasterian school, two catholic charity schools 
at Baltimore, two in the District of Columbia, a 
catholic seminary and college at Baltimore, a ca- 
tholic college in the District of Columbia, a catholic 
seminary at Emmitsburg in Maryland, a catholic 
free school and Orphans' asylum in Philadelphia. 
These large contributions to education, are not, 
however, highly respectable and cultivated as many 
of them are, the most remarkable characteristics of 
the American Roman catholic church. It is a cir- 
cumstance pregnant with reflections and results, 
that the Jesuits, since their suppression in Europe, 
have been established in this country. In 1801, 
by a brief of pope Pius the seventh, this society, 
with the concurrence of the emperor Paul, was es- 
tablished in Russia under a general authorised to 
resume and follow the rule of St. Ignatius of Loy- 
ola ; which power was extended in 1806, to the 
United States of America, with permission to 
preach, educate youth, administer the sacraments, 
&c. with the consent and approbation of the ordi- 
diiiary. In 1807, a noviciate was opened at George- 
town college in the District of Columbia, which 
continued to improve till 1814, when, being deemed 
sufficiently established, the congregation was for- 
mally organised by a papal bull. This society now 
consists of twenty-six fathers, ten scholastics in 
theology, seventeen scholarships in philosophy, 



S9 

rhetoric, and belles lettres, fourteen scholastics in 
the noviciate, twenty-two lay -brothers out of, and 
four lay-brothers in, the noviciate ; some of whom 
are dispersed throughout the United States, occu- 
pied in missionary duties, and the cure of souls. 
This statement is enough to prove the marvellous 
radication of the strongest fibres of the Roman Ca- 
tholic church in our soil. But the argument does 
not stop here. The oldest catholic literary esta- 
blishment in this country, is the catholic college just 
mentioned, which was founded immediately after 
the revolution, by the incorporated catholic clergy 
of Maryland, now capable of containing two hun- 
dred resident students, furnished with an extensive 
and choice library, a philosophical and chemical 
apparatus of the latest improvement, and professor- 
ships in the Greek, Latin, French and English lan- 
guages, mathematics, moral and natural philoso- 
phy, rhetoric, and belles lettres. This institution, 
I have mentioned, was put in 1805, under the di- 
rection of the society of Jesuits : and that nothing 
might be wanting to the strong relief in whjch the 
subject appears, the college thus governed, was by 
act of Congres^ of the United States of America, 
raised to the rank of a University, and empowered 
to confer degrees in any of the faculties. Thus, 
since the suppression of the order of Jesuits, about 
the time of the origin of the American revolution, 
has that celebrated brotherhood of propagandists 
been restored in the United States, and its principal 
and most operative institution organised and eleva- 
vated by an act of our national Legislature. 



^ 



60 

In like manner, the Sulpitian monks have been 
incorporated by act of the legislature of the State 
of Maryland, in the administration of the flour- 
ishing Catholic seminary at Baltimore. Still more 
remains, however, to be made known : For so si- 
lent and unobtrusive is religious progress, when 
neither announced nor enforced by political power, 
that it is probable, that many of these curious de- 
tails may be new to some of those who now hear 
them mentioned. Those relisrious houses and re- 
treats, which have been rended from their ancient 
seats in so many parts of Europe — monasteries and 
convents — are sprouting up and casting their un- 
cultivated fragrance throughout the kindlier glebes 
and wilds of America. Even where corruption 
and abuse had exposed them to destruction, learn- 
ing: turned with sorrow from the abomination of 
their desolation, and charity wept over the downfall 
of her ancient fanes. But here, where corruption 
and abuse can hardly exist in self supported reli- 
gious institutions — what have we to apprehend 
from these chaste and pious nurseries of education 
and alms ? What may we not hope, on the con- 
trary, for the mind, from their consecration and ex- 
tension ? In the oldest religious house in America, 
that of the female Carmelites, near Port Tobacco, 
in Maryland, the established number of inmates is 
always complete. The convent of St. Mary's, at 
Georgetown, in the District of Columbia, contains 
fifty nuns, having under their care a day school, at 
which, upwards of a hundred poor girls are educa- 
ted. The convent of the Sisters of Charity of St 



/ 



61 

Joseph, incorporated by the Legislature of Mary- 
land, at Emmittsburg in that State, consists of 
fifty-nine sisters, inchiding novices, with fifty-two 
young ladies under their tuition, and upwards of 
forty poor children. A convent of Ursulines, at 
Boston, is yet in its infancy, consisting of a prioress, 
six sisters, and two novices, who undertake to in- 
struct those committed to their charge in every 
polite accomplishment, in addition to the useful 
branches of female education. The Emmittsburg 
Sisters of Charity, have a branch of their convent 
for the benefit of female orphan children, establish- 
ed in the city of New York, where the Roman 
Catholics are said to have increased in the last twen- 
ty years, from 300 to 20,000. The church of St. 
Augustine, in Philadelphia, belongs to the Au- 
gustine monks, by whom it was built. There is 
also a branch of the Emmittsburg Sisters of Charity 
in this city, consisting of several pious and well in- 
formed ladies, who superintend the education of 
or[ han children. The Daughters of Charity, have 
another branch in Kentucky, where there are, like- 
wise, a house of the order of Apostolines, lately es- 
tablished by the Pope at Rome, a cloister of Lo- 
retto, and another convent. In the State of Mis- 
souri, there is a convent of religious ladies at the 
village of St. Ferdinand, where a noviciate is seated, 
of five novices and several postulants, with a thriv- 
ing seminary, largely resorted to by the young 
ladies of that remote region, and also a day school 
for the poor. In New Orleans, there is a convent 
ofUrsuline nuns, of ancient and affluent endowment, 
I 



62 

containing fifteen or sixteen professed nuns, and a 
number of novices and postulants. Tlie ladies of 
the Heart of Jesus, are about founding a second es- 
tablishment for education at Opelousas. I uill ter- 
minate these curious, I hope not irksome, particu- 
lars, by merely addint^, that in Maine and Ken- 
tucky, there are tribes of Indians attached to the 
Roman Catholic worship, whose indefatigable min- 
isters have always been successful in reclaiming 
those aborigines of this continent. Vincennes, the 
chief town of Indiana, where there is now a Ro- 
man Catholic chapel, was once a station of the Je- 
suits for this purpose. 

Upon the whole I do not think that we can 
reckon less than eight thousand places of worship, 
and five thousand ecclesiastics in the United States, 
besides twelve theological seminaries, and many 
religious houses, containing, the former, about five 
hundred, and the latter three hundred votaries ; all 
self-erected and sustained by voluntary rontribu- 
tion, and nearly all within the last half century. If 
this unequalled increase of churches and pastors, 
and worshippers, attests the prosperity of religion, 
we may rest assured of its w'elfare without tythesor 
political support : and we need not fear its decline 
from the ascendancy of republicanism. 

In proving the existence and magnitude of the 
American church, I have incidentally, I hope suffi- 
ciently, explained its character. For the most part 
well educated, well informed, and well employed, 
eloquent, unpensioned, self-sustained, trusting to 
their own good works, and relying on no court 



63 

favour or individual interest for advancement, ex 
empt from that parasite worldly- mindedness which 
the honest Massillon, even when preaching before 
Louis XIV. denounced as the canker of political 
relij^ion, the American clergy are necessarily called 
upon to think, to read, to write, to preach, andoffici* 
ate more than the European. i\ccordingly the divi- 
nity of the American church, if I am not mistaken, 
is much more active at this time, and its literature 
more efficient than that of England. Indeed it is 
hardly to be accounted for, that with the great in- 
ducements, means and opportunities of the dignita- 
ries of the English church, the mind is at present so 
litde benefited by their contributions to its enlarge- 
ment. I by no means design to speak disrespectful- 
ly of personages of whom I know little more than 
their titles ; nor do I call in question their learning, 
their piety, or even their partial usefulness. But 
assuredly it is fair to infer some radical defect 
in the system, when of all the modern English 
bench of bishops and arch-bishops there are very 
few, I believe, at present in any way known to lite- 
rature, not one distinguished for eloquence, and on 
that noble theatre, the house of peers, who ever 
heard of their performances? Relying on political 
protection, they seem to have lost the stimulus which 
urges their American brethren to incessant labours 
for the furtherance of religion, by eloquent sermons, 
by contributions to clerical literature, and by the 
ardent exercise of all their duties. The Roman 
Catholics boast of numerous converts from protest- 
antism in Europe. Where is the spirit of Tillot- 



^ 



6l! 

son and Sherlock, the Enghsh successors of the 
Chrysostoms and the Bazils ? Not in England at 
present. The works of the great fathers of the 
EngUsh church, those wells of doctrine as of Ian- 
guage undefiled, appear to be much more likely to 
be replenished and perpetuated in America. 

In this review, I have of course abstained from 
all polemic and various other delicate considera- 
tions connected with it : confining myself to the 
actual progress of religion as indicative of the ten- 
dency of the mind on that subject in this country. 
Anti-trinitarians and Jesuits, convents, and quakers, 
all grow and thrive together. The most imposing 
Roman catholic cathedral, and a considerable Unita- 
rian church are built within the sound of each 
others service ; and neither the intelligence nor the 
tranquillity of the community has suffered by their 
neighbourhood. There may be those who think in- 
deed that the growth is inordinate, that the establish- 
ments are on a scale of expense and influence dis- 
proportioned to our numbers, our principles, and even 
our independence. But to all such suggestions the 
answer is, that while the whole is spontaneous, there 
can be nothing to apprehend. 

My undertaking will be unfinished, if I do not 
explain the political and physical causes of the re- 
sults, to which attention has been invited. But that 
task, I may not attempt on this occasion, if ever. 
It is said to be the American fault, to expend itself 
in details, instead of reasoning by generalisation, 
I am very sensible of this, with many other faults, 
in this discourse, in which, scarcely any thing more 



^^ 



65 

r 

is attempted than the collection of facts. But, 
however imperfect the performance, my views 
will be accomplished, if the glimpses thus afforded 
should induce some qualified person to examine and 
explain the subject philosophically. The opera- 
tions of American institutions on the human un- 
derstanding, are a noble study for the labours of a 
life. The most intelligent portions of mankind, are 
animated by their impulses ; which already actuate, 
and, before long, must regulate the destinies of the 
world. The first settlement of this continent was 
from England, in a state of revolution, when all 
minds were exercised with new ideas of religious 
and political liberty. The associates of Pym and 
Hampden, and Raleigh, Penn and Locke, founded 
our institutions. A republican empire, really repre- 
sentative, always as ii were, in a state of temperate 
revolution, has been ever since exciting and evolving 
the great principles of free agency. Our simple 
and peaceable, but irresistible, religion and politics, 
are inoffensively reforming the brilliant abuses, 
which feudal and chivalric barbarism have rivetted 
on the nations of Europe. This rouses detraction 
against the whole elements, moral, physical, and 
intellectual, as well as political, of our existence. 
Naturalists, and statists, philosophers, historians, 
ambassadors, poets, priests, nobles, tourists, jour- 
nalists — I speak with precision to this catalogue — 
have in vain sentenced this country to degradation. 
It already ranks vviih communities highly refined 
before America was discovered. France and 
England were enjoying Augustan ages, when the 



<«, 



66 

place where we are met to discourse of literature 
and science, was a wilderness. But one hundred 
and forty years have elapsed, since the patriarch of 
Pennsylvania first landed on these shores, and sowed 
them with the germs of peace, toleration, and self- 
government. Since when, a main employment has 
been to reclaim the forests for habitation. It is 
not yet half a century since the United States were 
politically emancipated ; it is only since the late war 
that they have begun to be intellectually independent. 
Colonial habits and reverence still rebuke and 
counteract intellectual enterprise. Education, the 
learned professions, the arts, scientific and mechani- 
cal, legislation, jurisprudence, literature, society — 
the mind in a word — require time to be freed from 
Kuropean pupilage. 

It was not in a spirit of hostility to any other 
country, that I undertook to shew what has been 
already done in this ; but by that review to en- 
coura8:e further and keener exertions. 

To those who will inquire and reflect, the en- 
couragement of philosophy is as strong as the in- 
stinct of patriotism. But the empire of habit and 
of prejudice is in strong opposition to the supre- 
macy of thought and reason. There was a time 
when it was not considered disaffection to be 
ashamed of our country, nor disloyalty to despair 
of it, when we re-colonised ourselves. But within 
the last ten years, especially, the mind of America, 
has thought for itself, piercing the veil of European 
beau ideal. 

Still less, however, thm national disparap-ement 




67 

was national vanity the shrine of my sacrifice. 
Comparative views are indispensable. I might 
have compared America now with America forty 
years ago, which would have presented a striking 
and enlivening contrast. But I preferred the bolder 
view of America compared with Europe, disclaim- 
ing, however, invidious comparisons, which have 
been studiously avoided. The cause asserted is of 
too high respect to be defended by panegyric, or 
avenged by invective. The truth is an ample vin- 
dication. Let us strive to refute discredit by 
constant improvement. Let our intellectual motto 
be, that naught is done while aught remains to be 
done : and our study to prove to the world, that 
the best patronage of religion, science, literature, 
and the arts, of whatever the mind can achieve, 

is SELF-GOVERNMENT. 



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